2037
by The Denominator
Summary: Ellie is a soldier. Riley's a Firefly. They're two sides of the same coin. But in the end, someone has to the win the toss and neither of them enjoys losing. [AU] [Ellie x Riley] [American Dreams, Left Behind and The Last of Us]
1. In fair Verona, where we lay our scene

**Disclaimer:** **This is a fan work and in no way claims ownership of or identity as Naughty Dog's intellectual property: _The Last of Us _and its supplementary materials, _Left Behind_ and Dark Horse's _American Dreams_.**

* * *

There's that smell again. Coppery, fresh. Ellie can't think of a time when everything, including her morning gruel, didn't stink of it.

"How many?" someone asks.

"Seven in all," she answers, as a fellow soldier drags another body to the line-up.

They are all laid on their backs, dead. Some of their faces are barely visible, bullet wounds and blood disguising what might've been the semblance of a face. Some are women. Some have the bodies of teenagers. Ellie lets out a breath. She recognises one of them. It's a boy from the orphanage. He's turned out to be a Firefly.

"Okay, get their tags. Dead Firefly inventory is the best part of my day," Corporal Smith mutters, pulling out a notepad. "Private, will you do the honours?"

Ellie nods. She remembers the first time she was made to do this, years ago, freshly sixteen and fit for active duty. A pile of bodies to be identified with Private Williams tasked with turning them over and retrieving tags. She threw up afterwards, but nobody knows that and she'd rather it stay that way, secret and embarrassing. It's not like it was her first time seeing corpses. She'd seen and done worse before.

_To infected._

Looking around to make sure she's being covered (she gets nods of approval from Sanchez, Don and Will who all station themselves at key points around the perimeter, their guns ready to fire at anything that may come their way), Ellie kneels down and begins to work. She lowers her visor – can't run the risk of blood getting into her eyes. She starts with the first in line.

"Male. African-American. Looks to be in his late twenties, early thirties," she describes. She reaches down and pulls away his shirt collar to get to the tag. She yanks it free and has to rub the blood off of it to read it. "Name: Robert Claiborne. Number: 000345."

"Next."

"Female. Caucasian. Late thirties, early forties. Name: Beth Goldman. Number: 000360."

She runs down the lot of them, until she gets to the boy. All she needs to know is his number.

"Male. Caucasian. Early teens. Name: Dexter Flannigan," Ellie recites. The engraving on the dog tag is clean and precise. "Number: 000357."

"Three-five-seven?" Smith says, and suddenly he's smirking. "You realise something? The numbers are getting closer and closer."

"Is that supposed to mean something?" Will asks, not taking his eyes away from the entrance he's guarding.

"It means," Smith explains, "That they're getting less and less recruits. We're making a dent here."

"It could just mean we wiped out a single wave. That doesn't give us precise figures," Ellie grumbles, moving on to another body. "For all you know, there's some fucking 'fly out there with two thousand etched on his tag."

"Just as long as he isn't in fuckin' Boston!" Don shouts from across the room, and the rest of them burst into laughter.

Ellie finishes the last one and stands up, tossing the tag in her hand away. They don't keep these things.

"We're done here," Smith shouts, and everyone begins to re-group.

He tears the paper out of his notebook and hands it to Sanchez, "All right. Have them run this list through Census, see if any of these yahoos are registered citizens of the QZ. If they are, give word to Jensen's unit to visit and interrogate any remaining family they might have. Dawson!"

Will answers.

"Gas these bodies, light 'em up. Good work, folks."

It's the closest thing to a burial they'll get. Ellie read in a book before that there are cultures across the sea where burning the dead purifies them before they move on to the afterlife. She's seen enough charred piles to know there's nothing pure about this. But it has to be done. Rotting bodies so close to the QZ are a bad omen and a potential hazard.

Although they've cleared the area and done their checks, Ellie is still always cautious. There was that one time where they didn't realise a sniper had been hiding in some rafters in an opposite building. Four soldiers died. She adjusts her visor, raising it for better visibility. The unit moves out and heads back to the entrance of the QZ.

At the gates, as always, they are scanned and then dusted for spores. Next is the hosing down of their boots, waterproof fatigues, anything that has blood on it. Any items brought from the outside has to be checked, recorded and isolated until approved if necessary. They store their machine guns at weapons check, inform those at the base stores how many cartridges, magazines and rounds had been expended and what they still have. The entire winding down process takes more than an hour, and everyone is eventually relieved to the soldiers' quarters. They all have to write a report in their logs about the day's events. The unit leader does all the official paperwork but he advises his team to write journal entries, because according to him, "Pulling triggers and jerking off shouldn't be the only way you keep your hands busy."

Ellie winds up in her room and falls onto her cot, the thin mattress providing a kind of relief she'd been aching for all day. She doesn't mind recon, patrol is shitty but manageable, she can deal with going after infected, but her stomach always roils for 'fly swatting. None of the tags today read the name or number she dreads the most and for that, she's grateful. Every couple of months, registers get updated as best they can. Word exchanges between QZs with lists of known, missing or deceased Fireflies. She bribes the record-keeper with a couple food ration cards to be allowed to peruse them. It's risky business to express any kind of interest, but people understand, somewhat. And in this place, people would do anything for a bit more food. She searches for 000129 and when she can't find it, breathes… relief? Disappointment? She's not sure what it is. But she has to be careful to keep the digging only between her and the record-keeper. Nobody wants to be suspected as an ally or even a sympathiser.

After all, there's that one guy from another unit whose twin brother had been caught months earlier spraying "Look for the light" in an alleyway. The cadet, as a result, had been put through rigours to prove his loyalties. There are more people like that, in the QZ and the military, people who have someone they care about absconding to the resistance. They have to be very careful. This is a glass castle. QZ propaganda paints the place to be a haven, a fortress. Ever since she was a girl, Ellie's known it as a complete cage. But it's better in here than out there. Out there, if you're not getting shot because you're infected, then you're going to get shot for fear of becoming infected. She's heard stories of rapes and robberies and cannibalism and slavery. Inside is better. This is humanity's last hope and she is part of that. Even though it doesn't always feel like she's making a difference so much as maintaining a status quo. Before they're sent on missions, she sometimes hears Sanchez reciting _Padre Neustro_ while holding on to a cross-shaped pendant around her neck. The first time it happened, Ellie asked what she was praying for. Sanchez told her for safety and not to go to hell in case she dies out there. Ellie still finds it funny that anyone should worry about "going to hell" because hell is here and now.

She turns and faces the wall, watching the peeling paper, the grime stained in a pattern she's memorised well. What will she tell the kids at the home about Dex? She knows what will happen – after all, it happened before. There will be whispers, because come on, someone would've known. Or if they didn't, everyone will speculate. Children only leave the home for two reasons: they get kicked out or they become Fireflies. Dex had been good. Model, actually. An excellent future soldier.

Tomorrow someone will go, round up everyone in his age group, ask them questions.

"What's your relationship to him?"

"Did he ever say anything to you that you think we should know about?"

"What happened the last time you saw this person?"

"Have they left anything behind?"

"Did you see her with anybody strange?"

"Did you know Riley Abel's a Firefly?"

Ellie presses her eyes shut. Her own interrogation happened years ago, but she recalls vividly the stern voices, the nervousness, and how she had to swallow complete fear. She couldn't let them know and she still can't. Her mouth tastes a bit like copper.


	2. I thought she'd be there holding daisies

She hasn't lived Boston in over three years. The place hasn't changed much (which annoys her) but she knows that that's good news for a quarantine zone. Most of the others she's been to have gone to complete shit. The further inland you go, the worse everything looks. Abandoned zones, ghost towns. Everyone always flees to the coast. Not many manage to make it. But she's seen villages, fortified compounds or small communities still holding on. Not so much thriving as surviving. She's heard of a settlement out in Wyoming that's doing well for itself. Completely self-sustained. It sounds like a good retirement option. Things like that mean a step closer to a life she's only heard stories about from the older folk. That's what they fight for anyway. Steps closer.

As she peers from behind the ragged curtain out into the streets below, a feeling of unease washes over her. She took the first mission out of this place at fifteen. She only ever came back for rendezvous and recruitment within the Rhode Island and Massachusetts zones. She'd be here for perhaps a day or two. But she's being stationed now for an entire rotation, her protests and pleas to Marlene going unheard.

"You know why I can't go back there."

"That's exactly why I'm sending you," Marlene said, and that was the end of it.

She's always willing to give anything to the cause. Anything. But maybe not this. Most people visibly blanch at the idea of having to work the Bay State. MA military is infamous for taking out any kind of resistance with extreme prejudice. Unlike other zones that try to weed out trouble from the roots, this one is entirely happy hacking off buds, almost daring them to grow back just to do it again. Perhaps this is why they've stood for as long as they have. Their vision is small, but clearly focussed.

Because of this, everyone hates Boston. But not as much as she does. Utah isn't much better for her; if the journey to get there doesn't kill a man, the boredom will. It's a lot of babysitting a bunch of academics who can't fire a gun or pummel a damned thing to death. The Utah base is simultaneously the safest and most dangerous place to be. They're away from the military – soldiers are far too busy and scared to leave their respective QZs to ever come after them. Plus, they'd never get the funding or support to travel cross-country. Not to mention that would just plain be a suicide mission. She knows a group of twenty can easily fall to a group of three. But while they have no soldiers breathing down their necks there, they're still at risk from other threats. Hunger is one of them. Nobody is supplying them with rations. And everything is far too open to the elements to grow any kind of food where they're based. They eat what's either brought in on rare shipments or whatever grows in the wild (it's trouble in itself to try to visit the remnants of farms and orchards outside the city). Other than the hunger, there's the isolation. The infected. Lonely old Utah breeds the worst of them. Bloaters are generally hardest to find by the coast since there's a lower likelihood of infected advancing to that stage. More densely populated areas do mean more infected, but it also means more people fighting back. But in the midlands, it's a different story. They're left alone to grow, to evolve within this untouched environment. It's almost poetic. Kind of like what that Darwin guy said in that one book she read. The mid-West doesn't hold a candle to the Galapagos, though.

"You wanna back the fuck away from the window before someone sees us?" Chen grunts from the sofa, cleaning his gun and shooting her a nasty look.

"You wanna calm the fuck down?" she replies, rolling her eyes. "It's going to look more suspicious when you have a registered apartment blocked up with curtains 24/7. Open 'em from time to time. Even two-bit smugglers know how to play house well enough."

Chen turns back to his gun and mutters something.

_Asshole_.

There's just something about Boston that brings out the worst in people. She's not even with her regular crew which is irritating enough on its own. She knows they got her back but Marlene has given instructions that she needs to work with the faction here. She's to be in charge entirely of drafting any potentials and escorting the enlisted to drop-off/pick-up areas. She'll direct any insurrectionary action and raise awareness within the zone. It's not something that the others entirely appreciate her overseeing. After all, she's young – twenty years old. She has a reputation for being unpredictable and breaking protocol. That's not exactly leadership qualities, and even she knows it. But perhaps someone more flexible and adaptable is what the Boston resistance needs. Besides, she has five years of experience. Most people don't make it twelve months.

She pulls away from the window and goes into the bedroom designated as hers. She's never had her own (unless she counts the room in the patients' ward in the hospital base as a bedroom) and it seems pointlessly luxurious. The owner of the apartment is a little old lady. She's been here since outbreak and hasn't moved. She lived here with a son and husband for decades. Infection instantly took her husband, and sometime later, soldiers took her son. The room is his, and it's been left unchanged. It's covered in faded posters of old rock bands and the shelves are lined with dusty college-level textbooks. He must have been in his twenties when it happened. The old woman is a friend to the cause. Maybe she has nothing to live for except for a promised hope.

She finds a CD player on a desk. She inspects it, pressing a button and its lid pops open revealing a disc inside. It's still intact.

"90s alt mix," she reads aloud, scanning the tiny hand-scribbled print.

Sonic Youth, Hum, Garbage, School of Fish are some of the names she sees; she wonders momentarily if these are the songs titles or bands. She turns it over and finds the battery lid missing, and of course, no batteries inside. She goes to her backpack she earlier tossed in a corner, digs in the side pocket where she keeps her spares, and pulls out a handful of them. Some are duds that rely on the strength of the few with juice, and she tries a combination of batteries until she finds some that power the device. The little LCD screen lights up and she sees three out of a possible four full bars on the battery metre. She's amazed that it even works.

"All right, tunes."

She knows better than to do this, and she knows if any of the others catch her indulging in frivolities, they'd question her and in turn question Marlene's decision. They're not in a position to lose faith, what with their numbers dwindling and them making no headway in finding a cure to the CBI. But she needs these little distractions. She's spent enough years listening to QZ warnings and drills on loop and to the crackle of intercepted walkie-talkie and radio frequencies. When she can get music she relishes in it, even if she doesn't like what it sounds like. Music keeps the noise out. And it reminds her of a green-eyed girl she once knew.


	3. Am I my brother's keeper?

In the yard, the drill sergeant marches up and down the line of the newest additions eyeing them all sternly. Ellie stands with a couple other soldiers, arms crossed behind her back, sight locked dead ahead as their bold leader tries to instill some fear into the kids.

"Nobody here is an orphan!" he finally shouts at them. "You are all children of the Boston Quarantine Zone. You are under the new and interminable parentage of the Federal Disaster Response Agency."

Ellie turns her snigger into a light cough. She's heard this more times than a human being should before it's considered torture, but here she is again. Despite pissing off the principal for years, he reeled her back in to serve as counsel to the cadets on weekends. She understands why: she's a good bet at keeping the troublemakers in line. After all, she knows the school, the town, all the escape routes and the tricks of the trade. She knows firsthand what it's like passing through and _being_ passed through the system. Her higher-ups believe that she "gets" them. Plus she's a young soldier, someone that they can probably see themselves becoming in a few years. She exists as proof that the QZ is a way of life. The military has to stand, even as a concept. Hope doesn't cut it in the real world, and the reform school offers something tangible that dreams cannot. Sergeant McBullshit (as Ellie refers to him) continues his rant more or less reiterating those sentiments.

"People need sustenance, and here you are provided for. People need protection, and here you have an armoury of it. With the same vigour with which we put food in your bellies, we'll put a bullet into the skull of anything that tries to infiltrate your heads, fungus or Firefly. The world has broken down and we are here to keep the remaining strongholds of civilisation functioning. There are those who will disagree. But know this: those so-called freedom fighters only want to emancipate you from security, from safety. You will not fall to their false promises. They will feed you foolishness instead of food. You will be stronger and better than that. You will be soldiers."

Ellie can recite the rest of his speech verbatim.

"You are not hungry. You are not homeless. You are not helpless. We're not here to put a gun in your hands and ask you to die for a hopeless cause. We give you a means to fight for today because tomorrow does not exist. Everything is here and now. The past has no place here. So put aside any notions that you have been left alone. _This_ is your family. You have siblings, look around you. Your brothers-in-arms. Your father is the flag of our fathers. And 'mother' is spelt F-E-D-R-A. Now won't you all make your mama proud?"

There is confused and intimidated silence.

"You answer 'Sir, yes sir!', do you hear me!?" the sergeant spits, face red as a beet by now.

"Sir, yes sir!" they chant, only partially in unison. Some don't even open their mouths.

Ellie bites her lip to hide the amusement. Every new shipment of kids to the home has to listen to McBullshit and his lovely rehearsed welcome speech which he doesn't even try to mix up a bit. She watches the worn, dirty children of different sizes and ages, all lined up neatly, hands strictly at their sides. She observes a girl at the furthest end of the line looking down at the ground, expression poorly masking extreme sourness. She's one of them who didn't answer.

_There we go. _

A problem child has been found. Ellie does this with the new lot, sizes them up. She doesn't snitch on them as the Sarge hopes she would ("Tell me, Williams, which of these brats looks like they'll need solitary or toilet duty?"). For the past two years, all she does is grin and say that all of new recruits seem fine, constantly to his chagrin. He wants names and faces; he's always out for punk blood. But she's been in that chair, in that office (being intimidated by the former sergeant) and knows it's always better to prevent them from getting ripped a new one than having to try to put salve on later bruises.

Following the introduction, it's time for sorting and assignment of rooms and duties. Ellie makes sure to get the sour-faced girl's file. Her "team" for the remainder of their time at the home consists of that girl, a scrawny boy who couldn't be more than ten years old and a broadly built girl who might just be months away from active duty. She knows these three will need her training and counsel more than they'll ever know or accept it.

They relocate to the mess hall, each soldier at a table with their respective group. They are to meet once a week for an hour with their groups for "bonding". Ellie takes a seat and instructs the children to do the same. Their countenances are miserable, but there are never happy faces coming into this place. She scans through their files quickly to get their names. The boy is Jace, nine. The big girl is Myra, fifteen. And then there's Wendy, thirteen years old.

"I'm Private Williams," she tells them. "I'll be in charge of—"

"Did someone knife your face?" Myra interrupts her to ask, jutting her chin out and eyeing Ellie's scar.

Ellie smirks and answers, "If you're asking if this happened while I was on duty, then no. I had that for a long time. This, however…"

She rolls up the long sleeve of her uniform and shows them a rather ugly gash on her right forearm. Myra is taken aback. Jace pales but doesn't tear his eyes away.

"That looks sick," Myra finally says as flatly as she can manage.

"Whoa," whispers Jace.

"Some wire meshing taught me a pretty good lesson. I'd recommend not doing stupid shit and giving yourself any unnecessary wounds."

"Did it hurt?" Jace asks so quietly she barely hears him.

"Hurt like a motherfucker," she admits. "You'll get a couple of these when you're a soldier, that's unavoidable. The trick is to not die from them. They're not that bad, though. They make rad stories to tell."

"To tell who?" Wendy mutters, staring at the table.

She hasn't looked at Ellie or anyone once since they all sat down. Ellie almost wants to laugh – the defensiveness, the sarcasm, the bitterness. Are all thirteen-year-olds like this? It's nostalgic.

"To new recruits. Teammates. Your friends," Ellie offers. She adds gently, "Future family."

Wendy scoffs.

"Who says any of us will even live that long?"

Ellie considers the question before answering.

"You're right. You might not even make it to your dorm room before you clock out. I mean, I could go out on patrol and a smuggler could shank me and that's that. You could be running from infected and get your ass bitten. Any soldier can engage Fireflies and get their entire face blasted off. I won't bullshit you and tell you to have hope for a happy future. We all know what it's like to sleep and don't dream a damned thing. All I can do is advise you guys about getting by. I know a guy who lived to be an old man, and he died like a regular human being. I think that's worth it, don't you? I'm alive and I'd like to keep living, even just a day more. You should try it sometime. Doesn't feel so bad."

Wendy finally looks at her and asks, "So why be a soldier and not a Firefly?"

Myra's eyes go wide at the comment. Jace looks startled. Ellie wonders if this kid even knows how monumentally stupid it is to say something like that in general, far less for inside a military school and in front of a soldier.

_Thank shit I took this one._

"I knew someone who once thought like that," she answers her. "I can tell you: there's no happy ending there."

"I didn't ask for a sob story," says Wendy, turning away completely and looking out the barred window.

_Little bastard._

Ellie smiles.


	4. You can't map a sense of humour

Riley locks the door behind her and turns to the group sitting around the table. The basement is dark and dank, but it's their glorious command centre, a secret place known to Marlene, herself and the twelve strained faces all looking at her with a mixture of desperation and annoyance. She knows what they're thinking. It's going to take a lot to remind this bunch that deep down, she's a Bostonian like the rest of them. That's she's a Firefly like the rest of them. She knows why they're on edge and more so why they're all pissed. She wants to crack a joke and ease the tension but given the looks on their mugs, she doesn't think they'll appreciate her finding _anything_ even remotely funny right now.

"What's our damage?" she asks, taking a seat.

Fitz sighs and leans back in his chair before telling them.

"Seven dead," he tells them, voice low and weary. He pushes forward a ledger opened to a page with names and numbers with red lines running through them. "Six new recruits, one seasoned. It could've been carelessness; they were off the designated safe route. Wandered straight into a patrol outside the zone. Word is they engaged and our side took all the losses. They weren't well equipped or properly trained to deal with soldiers."

"Why is that?" she presses.

"We got fucked by Robert, our _ex-_dealer," Chen explains. "He started charging five times the amount we had agreed to. The group had few arms and limited ammo, and we didn't have the resources to give them much tactical training beforehand. Clifton thought Rhode Island would've been a better place for proper training."

There are far too many problems in that one statement than she's ready to deal with, so she opts to talk about the simplest one.

"If our old supplier is shafting us in the ass, why aren't we trading with any of the other dealers?" Riley asks him.

"Let's just say those guys and their lives had really bad breakups," he tells her, smirking. "Most big dealerships have scattered, there's no real establishment left any more. Robert more or less is running a monopoly in the black market. We take what we can get from the most reliable sources, and those happen to be the smugglers right now. And that leads me to our scheduled weapon drop."

"What about it?"

"Our new suppliers will be coming back into the city sometime next week with firearms. Robert fucked them over too, so they're getting stuff from the outside. The shipment should be adequate for about ten people, at least that's the arrangement," he tells her. "They want you to come along to seal the deal."

"What for?"

"All of Boston's underbelly knows that Clifton's dead. Tess said she wanted to meet with our new head before she does any further business with us. She's particular like that."

"They trustworthy?" she asks him.

"The enemy of my enemy," Chen answers, a grin on his face. "Marlene used to deal with them off and on, but with other materials. The last thing Clifton managed to do was convince them to let us in their arms deal. Tess's good for it. A formal meeting's just precaution."

"When's the drop?"

"Should be in four days."

"All right, Chen, Margot and her team will go with us," Riley instructs them. Now on to the next issue. "The escort team, any word from them?"

"None," offers Michael, the main liaison between all the Massachusetts zones. "I'm wagering either they saw that nobody showed up and are on their way back to Rhode Island… or they're dead too."

Riley digests this information.

"All right, I'll need a map showing all the safe routes. Those need to be double-checked. There had to be a reason why the group strayed. When was the last time the routes had clearance?"

Charlotte speaks up, producing a tattered map of the city. She spreads it on the table and everyone leans in a little closer for a clearer view. It's covered in pen markings. Charlotte points to each one of the routes as she explains.

"Out of the ten paths, we know that two have fallen under military watch. About three have had reports of Fireflies having to deal with infected so they're not entirely safe anymore. We've used these two interchangeably over the last year. The rest haven't been checked in about six months."

"Six months? Why?"

"It just doesn't make sense to use them. They're too out of the way. It adds about three or four hours extra to the journey," Louis joins in.

Louis was previously in line to be the next head of the Boston Fireflies. He's not entirely pleased with Riley's presence and she can sense it. If anyone has to outrank him or replace a leader, it should be one of the twelve. But whatever Marlene says goes. Louis seems to have accepted it quietly, not challenging her openly like Chen or Diana have earlier in the week.

"That's poor reasoning not to use those routes," Riley tells them all flatly.

"Three or four hours longer mean the world of a difference when you're hustling out of the city," Louis explains.

"You're right about that. But I think keeping our people alive for three or four hours longer is way better than taking clearly dangerous and compromised routes. Even if they are shorter. We need to establish scout groups to determine the safety of the three unchecked routes. The ones being manned by the military – cross those off the list entirely. We're down to eight routes, of which I'm told three have infected? We'll need more intel on that before we decide what to do about those."

"It's not like it's easy for us to go out and check these things!" Diana argues. "We could lose good people putting them at risk just to waste time and effort doing this. I say we stick to the routes we're used to. This one group strayed. All of us shouldn't be put on a chopping block for it."

"It's not going to be any easier for our cause if all our new recruits get slaughtered before they make it off the farm, either," Riley counters, trying not to raise her voice. "We need this to be secure. We don't have the luxury to lose _any_ of our numbers. It'll be hard work, but it has to be done. I think it's wiser to have two trained Fireflies go out scouting for safe passage than to lose six inexperienced ones on a bad route. We're a dying species, and you need to remember that."

The room becomes quiet until someone clears their throat. They continue the meeting, Riley notices, more subdued than at the beginning. The tension is less palpable. Perhaps they're all exhausted. They agree to break until the next meeting which is in a fortnight.

They never all leave at once nor do they take the same exit out of the building. Every thirty minutes, four of them leave. Riley agrees to go with the last group, which leaves her with Chen, Abby and Louis. Chen and Abby make small talk with Louis and Riley busies herself by pouring over a copy of the city map. She knows this place well enough to get around major parts of it, but if they need newer or safer exits, she has to know it like she knows every bullet wound or bruise she's ever gotten.

"All right, we can leave. Till the next time," Louis tells them. He comes close and pats Riley on the shoulder. "Welcome to Boston."


	5. Seven-six-two millimeter

The jeep swerves hard and Don jolts to the side, knocking into Ellie's shoulder.

"Sorry," he apologises, straightening back into his seat.

"Not as sorry as I am that Will's such a _fucking terrible driver_," she says loudly. "I don't know why they don't let me do it."

"Can you even see over the steering wheel, sweetie?" Will jabs and there are chuckles throughout the Wrangler.

"Fuck you and you _and _you," she replies good-naturedly, giving the finger to everyone who laughed.

The unit has to investigate and put a stop to the increase of slum inhabitants scanning positive for infection. Everybody knows why. Scavengers go through the sewer system that links the outer parts of the zone to the abandoned city. Most of them try to find loot, others are merely looking for rodents or other animals to eat – meat is the rarest of commodities to come by, and the army is the only faction in the QZ who has first access to beef, pork, chicken or horsemeat (though Ellie refuses to partake in the latter). There's the highest possibility that the citizens encountered spores or infected down there searching the lines. But an explanation is useless when the army demands action. Nobody is really up to trawling through the trenches (especially when the sludge smell stays for days in their hair and noses), but it has to be done.

The three vehicles roll to a stop to the entrance to the tunnels. Everyone gets out except the drivers. They have to head back to the barricades with the jeeps to avoid scrapper attacks. The Corporal told them stories of the early days where scouting missions ended with dead soldiers and dismantled jeeps. The drivers get instructions for a return time. Everyone synchronises their watches on command after which the vehicles take off, trailing grey dust behind them.

"Okay, be alert people," Smith tells them. "Watch your brothers' backs. We're _all_ going home today to wash the poop off our pants. Williams, you, Donovan and Eckles go scout Line F. Johnson, Sanchez and Iwata take Line G. The rest of us will go down E. We'll regroup at this position at precisely 1500 hours. Radio in if there's any trouble."

Feeling around for her switchblade in her leg pocket, Ellie feels a kind of relief. She doesn't think it's lucky but she always feels better knowing that it's close to her. It's the one thing her mother gave to her (she's not even sure if her hair or height or eyes even came from Anna). Well, the only thing besides the letter, which she keeps hidden in a under a floorboard in her room.

This part of the system has three clear pathways that, according to their maps, diverge to the west, north and east. Ellie's group enters the F-line and march ahead, machine guns and flashlights pointed forward. Don and Eckles assume the lead and Ellie takes up the rear, stopping and turning around every now and again to check their backs. The sewers are disgusting as she expected. What's not covered in moss is coated with murky sludge. A small channel of brown water flows lazily through the middle which they try to avoid. Some natural light comes through the iron grates and crumbled parts of the streets above them. Ellie keeps an eye out for floating particles. They walk for about twenty minutes, but encounter nothing alive but some rats.

"Tunnel of love, huh?" Eckles says quietly.

"Love stinks," Ellie answers back as she breathes in a particularly foul odour.

"Truer words have never been spoken," Don tells them. "D'you know Becky said it's over?"

Ellie groans in slight annoyance. Everyone in the unit are quite aware of Don's ongoing saga with his longtime girlfriend Becky - they broke up at least twice a year. Usually they all had to put up with the playthrough, blow-by-blow account of every argument and reconciliation.

"I dunno man, I think it's time you call it - hold up. Dead-end ahead."

They approach a part of the line where the street has caved in entirely, blocking the rest of the pathway.

"There's no way through that," Ellie says, eyeing the concrete rubble and mangled metal. She pulls out the folded map and a stubbed pencil from her pocket. She marks the point where they've found the blockage before storing it away. "We'll have to climb it, go up into the streets."

"What's the point, it's a no-go."

"According to the map, we have a mile again to cover before it breaks into decimated territory. We'll be doing a pretty half-assed job if we stop here. Let's just go up and see if there's any other way down. I bet there is."

"I'll take you up on that, Williams. If you're wrong, you're scrubbing the muck off my boots when we get back," Eckles says, holding out a padded hand to her.

Ellie grins and shakes it.

"Deal. And if I win, you have all my toilet-cleaning duties for a week."

"What the fuck, how is that even fair?" he protests.

"Whose shit is worse – ours or this?"

"That's a fair enough point," Don agrees, nodding.

"All right, I'll go up first and see if we're clear," Ellie says, slinging her gun over her shoulder.

She begins climbing up the rubble, careful not to dislodge any of the stones. The last thing they need is noise or a way to destroy what's their only ladder to the surface. Nearing the top, she slowly peers above. It's an empty street, filled only with abandoned shells of cars, buildings lining the sides. She pulls herself out entirely and continues scanning the area.

"Clear," she calls down below, and she sees Eckles begin his ascent.

She looks around until she finds the spot she's looking for. A crater lower down the street, right where the rest of the sewer line should be. She moves quickly to crouch behind the skeleton of an old car. In place, she surveys the surroundings again. Nothing. The buildings are dead and quiet, the street lifeless. Don and Eckles make to the top and she waves them over.

"Looks like our journey continues, boys," she tells them, pointing to the hole. "Let's go. Once we have evidence that infected are coming in through this way, we can get the guys at demolition to seal it off entirely."

"I'll go first," Don says, standing slowly. "Keep me covered."

Ellie watches down the street, gets her gun ready, while Eckles keeps his eye on Don.

"He's at the opening to the sewer line below," Eckles tells her.

She hears Don's voice.

"Okay, I'm going dow—"

A blast echoes through the air. Ellie jumps and follows the sound, peering over the car's trunk to see into the street. In half a second, Don drops to his knees. Ellie's eyes go wide and Eckles is shouting something she can't make out clearly. Don slumps over to the side, a pool of red forming around him. Ellie instantly reaches out, grabs Eckles and pulls him back.

"Don't go out there," she warns, voice wavering.

He gives her a hard look, fear and anger all over his face.

"We have to—"

Ellie shakes her head. She's seen enough to know.

"Fuck," he spits out.

He presses his head against the metal of the car and bangs the bumper with a fist. Ellie gets out her radio.

"This is Private Williams, over. Our group has been attacked on the F-line. We have a soldier down. Send back-up immediately. I repeat, send back-up. Over."

She waits for a response, but doesn't hear anything. She repeats the message while Eckles mutters to himself.

"Are they watching us? Where are those motherfuckers?"

She hears a garbled messaged, marred with static from the other end so she doesn't quite know if it's confirmation or not.

_Fuck_. _Think, Ellie, think. Calm down. Think it through. Breathe._

"Okay, Eckles," she starts. "We can't go back to the line; they know our position. We'd get splattered before we even make it a foot in that direction. And we can't stay here either – we're sitting ducks. Did you see where the shot came from? Gimme something to work with."

He takes a breath and presses his eyes shut tightly.

"Going by the trajectory, they're up ahead, in one of the buildings, not too far. To the west. Close to the ground, judging from the noise and… the cleanness of the shot. Most likely a pistol."

"Good, Eckles. Good," she says reassuringly. "Now we don't know if this bastard's a lone ranger or part of a whole posse. We need to be careful. There's an open doorway in that building to my left. I'm going in and I need you to have my back, okay? The radio's fucked so we're not getting help any time soon. We need to take these guys out. Else we're maggot chow."

"Fuck. FUCK," he hisses.

Ellie gives the area around them a quick scan again, double-checking windows and corners. She takes a deep breath.

"Cover me," she says, holding her gun steady and raising slowly to dash inside the building.

"Williams?"

"Yeah?"

"You have to clean my boots, all right?" he tells her quietly.

"As long as you're scrubbing the toilets."

She makes a run for it.


End file.
